Zambians know where Rupiah truly stands on corruption

Zambians know where Rupiah truly stands on corruption
Written by Editor

NO sensible and honest person in this country will oppose the need to fight corruption.Corruption is a cancer that has been eating at the very fabric of our statehood. We are afraid that if no serious steps are taken, we could easily find ourselves becoming a failed state. We could become a country beholden to criminal elements and some puppets who run government. Corruption weakens even the strongest and most credible of state institutions and officials. And as Rupiah Banda has correctly observed, corruption creates many problems for our people.

Where there is corruption, people have difficulties even defending necessary or vital state institutions like the judiciary, the legislature and indeed even the presidency itself when they are under attack from corrupt elements. Corruption undermines the dignity of the state and its institutions. The eventual result of such a state of affairs is the total collapse of law and order. This is not too far-fetched. It has happened in many countries in Africa and continues to happen. This is why we ought to remain vigilant and fight corruption wherever it manifests.

It is easy to hide behind general platitudes and slogans affirming the need to fight corruption. This is why we ought to understand very clearly what one means when he or she says we need to fight corruption. We say this because it is possible for someone like Rupiah to say we need to fight corruption without fully accepting and committing himself to the demands of such a declaration, to what fighting corruption entails in his day-to-day decisions and practices.

It will not help Rupiah to make such a declaration and yet fail to deal with the corruption that is right under his nose, that he himself is involved in. A person who wants to fight corruption can never condone what Rupiah is condoning; cannot fail to repudiate what Rupiah is embracing; cannot fail to denounce what Rupiah is praising and defending.

It is hardly a week since Rupiah swore in MMD chairman Michael Mabenga as Deputy Minister of Lands. When Rupiah did this, we did not want to comment on this appointment. We kept quiet because we had said more than enough on this issue that made it impossible for Mabenga to be appointed to any public office for the seven years Levy Mwanawasa was president. Having publicly committed himself to Levy's legacy, we thought Rupiah would not do anything that openly violates Levy's legacy. First, we were very shocked to hear that Rupiah had appointed Mabenga a deputy minister. And second, to see him praise Mabenga as a noble man who has done nothing wrong and that those speaking against his appointment were talking nonsense. There is a High Court judgment about Mabenga's corruption which was also upheld by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court even suggested that Mabenga should be arrested for corruption. To Rupiah all this is nonsense. Why?

We all know the speed with which Rupiah moved to reappoint Dora Siliya into his government because as far as he was concerned, she had done nothing wrong and was cleared by the courts. We don't need to waste time discussing this matter. Our people understand it. Our people also know that Dora was not acting alone, Rupiah's family was involved in what she was doing. And there is unchallenged evidence to this effect about Rupiah's son, Henry’s involvement in the matters that got Dora to appear before a tribunal set up under the parliamentary and ministerial code of conduct Act.

As for Rupiah, he is on record defending the right of his sons to be involved in government business. Rupiah sees nothing wrong with his family using their position to do business with government or front for people wishing to or are doing business with government. In some cases they have even become debt collectors for people owed money by government. To Rupiah there is nothing wrong with this influence peddling; it is not corruption.

This is why we doubt Rupiah's sincerity when he talks about fighting corruption. To him, this is nothing but a convenient ploy to try and earn some points from the donors, from those who are opposed to corruption.

It is not possible to fight corruption without being fully committed. Fighting corruption is not a comfortable business. It is not uncommon for those who try to fight corruption to find themselves having to deal with matters that involve people that one wished were not involved in corruption. But there is no room for being selective. It doesn't matter who is involved, corruption has to be fought. This is one area where Rupiah has failed even before he began. We shouldn't forget that Rupiah was involved in electoral corruption. Contrary to the electoral Act, Rupiah was bribing the electorate to vote for him in last year's election. It was not a difficult thing for Rupiah to hire, at some fee, all sorts of elements to endorse his candidature in last year's election. It is also a well-documented fact that Rupiah's campaign corruptly benefited from Ministry of Health resources. This is corruption, but Rupiah doesn't see it as such. This being the case, what type of corruption is Rupiah going to fight? Any leader of government who wishes to fight corruption must be committed to good governance. This means that the government that he or she leads must be committed to transparency and accountability. Any actions that deviate from these norms are the foundations for corruption. In fact, this is what corruption is. Being a government leader demands that all that Rupiah does should be done in the best interest of the Zambian people first and foremost.

Can anyone honestly say today that Rupiah is truly committed to transparency and accountability in the way he is running government? Or to put it another way, can anyone truly and honestly say that Rupiah is running an honest, clean government? And is there any honest person who can dispute that Rupiah is running a corrupt government?

It is not enough to rattle anti-corruption slogans and target certain individuals who one has political scores to settle with and yet claim to fight corruption.

On the same score, it is dishonest to think that by arresting a few lowly-placed government officers like Kapoko and his friends, then Rupiah and his government are fighting corruption. Everyone in this country knows that the billions of kwacha and millions of dollars that the government has lost at the Ministry of Health were not stolen by Kapoko and his friends alone. Where are the big fish? Where are those who shared their loot from Ministry of Health with Rupiah's campaign? What about the way Rupiah is dealing with appointments? Can anyone say that Rupiah is not being blatantly nepotistic or even tribalistic? Unfortunately for him it is clear for all to see which names are dominating his appointments. This is corruption. Levy was rightly criticised for introducing what others called the family tree in the government. We are not surprised that some of our people have begun to say if Levy brought a family tree, Rupiah has brought a family and tribal forest.

Rupiah's commitment to nepotism and tribalism cannot be a quality that qualifies him to fight corruption. And these appointments cannot be said to be a product of oversight because Rupiah's nepotism and tribalism came out very clearly at the beginning of his campaign last year. Rupiah told the people of Eastern Province, where he hails, to chase away presidential candidates from other regions of our country who tried to venture in to his province and tell them to go back where they came from. We vigorously criticised and denounced this tendency of Rupiah and pointed out the dangers inherent in it. We did so not out of malice or hatred for Rupiah. We did so out of hatred for nepotism and tribalism because of the evils it carries with it. And today we are not surprised that Rupiah is putting in practice this trait of his. At his last press conference, Rupiah said Hakainde Hichilema should not criticise him because they were not tribal cousins. This is the kind of narrow corrupt thinking that Rupiah engages in. What has tribal cousinship got to do with today's national politics in a republic? Rupiah also shamelessly admitted that he engaged in tribal campaigns by asking 'his people' whether they were Tongas to vote for Hakainde. This is not the kind of language that should come from the mouth of a head of state who is not corrupt.

This is why we continue to doubt Rupiah's sincerity when he talks about fighting corruption. He does not mean it at all because he seems to be suffering from an incurable form of corruptionmalitis. It seems to be in his blood, in his bones, it is in every part of him.

Until Rupiah stops behaving in what somebody called 'it is our time to eat' mode, he cannot fight corruption. It seems Rupiah is so used to being a commission agent that he has problems transitioning to being head of state. It is not possible to fight corruption and yet want you and your relatives to unjustifiably eat from the government resources. Until Rupiah deals with this challenge and realises that he is there to serve and not to eat, fighting corruption will be a pipe dream. What is good is that he cannot deceive anyone anymore. Zambians know who Rupiah is and where he truly stands on issues of corruption.